SVCHOST.EXE ??

What is svchost.exe? On my CPU processes there are 4 of them, totalling about 14,000K mem usage.

If I try to 'end process' them I get that annoying 60 second countdown timer. What is up with that?

I will be very grateful if someone can please tell me how to get rid of it. Furthermore there is all sorts of crap on my 'processes list' - most of which is useless to me. Any good spyware, etc. software that can do me the favour? Please do let me know.